As the entry of Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union edges closer, condescension towards eastern Europeans and their countries of origin grows into a crescendo. The double standards could not be more glaring. Both Bulgaria and Romania are routinely portrayed as backward, mafia-ridden hell-holes that will infect the rest of the continent come January 1. But is the political system in either country so much more corrupt than in Berlusconi-tainted Italy or cash-for-honours Britain?

We can also witness this unappealing chauvinism in the way eastern European migration is covered in the tabloid press. Eastern Europeans are castigated for flooding into Britain, yet very few people stop to ask why so many people (427,000 have left for Britain since 2004) are leaving the region where they grew up and have friends and family. On the rare occasions they do, the "pernicious legacy" of 40 years of communism is usually held responsible.

But communist rule ended more than 16 years ago - can it really still be blamed for the problems of today? What the people of the region are in fact escaping from are the consequences of the neoliberal economic policies of the early 90s, which led to what economist Laszlo Andor has called "Europe's great depression", the biggest economic slump in the continent since the 30s.

Away from the glitzy, globalised centres of Budapest, Prague and Warsaw, millions face poverty and hardship in the former communist bloc. GDP in the region fell between 20% and 40% in the decade after 1989, and, while a minority have seen real wages rise since the millennium, for the majority the "transition" process has witnessed a spectacular fall in living standards and a massive rise in unemployment and inequality. Western politicians laud the countries of "new" Europe for their "dynamic, flat-rate tax" economies, but deny there is any link between the economic reforms and the massive exodus.

The condescension shown towards eastern European migrants is, in many ways, the real, lasting legacy of the cold war. It is essential for western neoliberals to deny any achievements of the system that half of Europe lived under: hence the vogue for equating the 40 years of postwar eastern European socialism with the horrors of Nazi Germany.

It needn't - and shouldn't - have happened like this. Had the eastern countries not thrown out the baby with the bathwater in the early 90s by adopting the massively deflationary IMF/EU prescription, their economies would now be in better shape and much of the current wave of migration could have been avoided. The large-scale labour exodus we are witnessing may benefit the CBI and western multinationals but certainly not most western workers, who are seeing their wage rates depressed. But the biggest losers are the eastern countries, deprived of so many young, talented and productive people.

The irony is that far from being backward, eastern Europe, thanks to the residual effects of 40 years of socialism, still puts much of western Europe (particularly Britain) to shame when it comes to the quality of its education, public transport and healthcare. Children of the former socialist countries regularly come top of European studies of comparative education systems: in the latest International Maths Organisation competition, Bulgaria finished fifth, Hungary seventh and Romania 10th.

The people of the east have been bombarded by more than 15 years of relentless propaganda extolling the need for further "reforms" and "modernisation". The view that "west is best" and "there is no alternative", encouraged by political leaders with one eye on an EU commissioner's job or World Bank posting, has proved disastrous.

In Britain we are told ad infinitum that "our way" is the best and the east irredeemably backward. Why, then, do we need to import railway engineers from Romania? Why, if our dental system is so superb, are we flying out to use the services of Hungarian dentists? And why are English teacher-training establishments showing videos of Hungarian maths classes?

The east-west divide and the xenophobia that accompanies it will only end when there is a more honest, balanced appraisal of the legacy of communism and an acknowledgment that despite the lack of political freedoms there were also solid achievements. At the same time, we need to recognise that the economic "reform" process has created far more problems than it has solved. Global capital and its political spokes-people will of course do all they can to ensure that neither happens.